When W11 is forced on your PC

[hpoehrli]

Friend could not stop W11 being forced on his W10 installation on a Toshiba Tecra Laptop. All functioned quite normal. 10 days later he could not access data anymore, passwords were not accepted anymore on all accounts, including admin. I could reset the passwords using the three access questions. All functions normal by now.
Qustion: Could it be that with deletion of the "Go back Function" as by Microsoft after 10 days the passwords were also deleted ?
And if so: What can be done to prevent such ?

 

[Barry Wallis]

Could it be that with deletion of the "Go back Function" as by Microsoft after 10 days the passwords were also deleted ?

I have never heard anything like this.

 

[PHolder]

could not stop W11 being forced

This is seemingly a clue. While MS is certainly aggressively offering Windows 11, I am not aware of any situation where a Windows 11 installation is forced or required. It may be something specific to some [presumed] pre-installed Toshiba management software. (This is assuming it's not a work laptop and under work management.)

 

[rfrazier]

In the latest podcast I think 858 @Steve talked about a Never11 utility he's coming out with. It's possible it could have been in a podcast 1 or 2 before that one. He didn't give a lot of details but you could search in the transcripts to find it if you like. I'm not sure it's totally ready.

May your bits be stable and your interfaces be fast. Ron

 

[PHolder]

Never11

https://www.grc.com/incontrol.htm

 

[rfrazier]

https://www.grc.com/incontrol.htm

@PHolder I love @Steve 's tiny little utilities. Cool and simple. 80 whole K bytes for that one!

May your bits be stable and your interfaces be fast. Ron

 

[hpoehrli]

Thanks everybody for replying. The PC is a private stand-alone thing. I would now install NEVER11, but in this case I was to late.
It is a mystery how the user-passwords disappeared. But at least if at the setup those Security questions were set and remembered, to set the new passwords is simple and easy.
Take note: 10 days after conversion to W11 the old W10 system data will be erased automatically !
Hanspeter, Switzerland

 

[PHolder]

Well here's the only other idea I have. The filesystem may have had some creeping file corruption. It may have caused the database of users (the SAM I believe Windows calls it) to be corrupted and then replaced with a default/empty one. You could try checking around in the logs (or EventLog as Windows calls it) to see if you see any mention of such an event. More importantly, you could and probably should run CHKDSK to make sure things are good now.

 

[Lob]

Having done an in-place upgrade back in October to 11 and then later had to wipe my machine for some reason, I actually believe the in-place upgrade to be a little bit "ugly". My path would be to go 10->11, backup data, reset (download from the cloud) and then log into the clean machine.

I've not seen anyone forced to go to 11 yet.

I've also never seen any system data wiped, 10 days later or otherwise, for no reason. Did someone run CCleaner or something? I would also recommend Bitwarden for user passwords and not store them in the browser (I rather suspect the user somehow got to a new account which was empty.....).

 

[hpoehrli]

Just for your INFO This is to be found in the GRC newsgroup discussions:

From: Jim J
Subject: Re: Recovering files on WIN 10 after system reset/repair
Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2022 18:40:36 -0800

On 03/08/2022 02:40 PM, David wrote:
> On 3/8/2022 4:58 PM, AlanD wrote:

>> Have a look on the C: drive for a folder called "windows.old". Unless
>> specified to delete user files, they should be stored in there.
>> Although it is called Windows.old, it also contains /Users/* and
>> hopefully documents, pictures etc.

This is from Microsoft. Points; the old folder will be removed after 10
days and WIN 10 will not make a old folder if system recovery is
disabled. One other thing, make a system restore ASAP and as long as
the user is running as admin these things will happen.

When you refresh Windows 10, upgrade to Windows 10, or custom install
Windows 10 on the same partition as the previous Windows installation
without doing a clean install, then you will have a C:\Windows.old
folder in your new installation afterwards.